The Bear Wins

I think I'm going to be forced to heed the admonitions I received from personnel at both the Wild Bear Mountain Ecology Center in Eldora and Colorado Division of Wildlife and take down the hummingbird feeder on the west side of the cabin.


I had another visit from the bear or a bear last night about 10:30.  I had returned from signing the lease and a mound more paperwork for the apartment in Boulder and found I was really tired.  I guess because so many things I'm trying to do with this right arm are painful, but since it's all new I don't know until I try which things those are, I'd experienced quite a bit of intermittent pain during the day.  I'd fed the fox, made and eaten some supper and gone to bed to read, but had to take a pain pill.  It had been a hot day in Boulder and was warm here and I'd originally fallen asleep with this bottom screened panel on the cabin door open...

...preserves my privacy if someone should happen to come to the door, but lets some air in.  I had dozed off reading, but woke up and thought about leaving this panel open but, as it turned out, wisely decided against that, turned off Jazz Radio's Guitar Jazz, which I'd had streaming all evening, and turned out the light.  Within a few minutes, I heard the bear moving on the deck, with a little less wandering about than I'd noticed the other night, and what sounded like a lot more determination toward the bird feeder, with the exception that it stopped and tried the door!  Not making this up.  

Ever since it stopped snowing, I've been rather nonchalant about the condition of the front door.  The only thing between me and, in this case the bear, is this single barrel bolt...

...and ever since I took the door off to get the old hide-a-bed out of the cabin, unless I remember to pull up on the door knob when I close the door, it doesn't align.  I'm pretty sure I had the bolt shot last night.


When my brother-in-law made this door with the screened panels to increase the air circulation in the cabin during the summer, he decided to reuse the old door knob and lock set that my Dad had installed on the original door in 1939...

...looks quaint but doesn't really work any longer.  It really didn't work all last winter after I had the weather stripping installed and even after I removed that during the hide-a-bed episode, it barely latches.  And part of the other barrel bolt the carpenter installed last fall had fallen off.   I'm  not sure why the carpenter didn't use the right half of the old barrel bolt by aligning the new left half when he installed it, but the right half he installed was mounted on a little block of wood that split.  He probably had to shim it out in order to get it to align after installing all that weather stripping that never worked.

...I think, if I find I can actually use a screwdriver with this injured arm, I may try to fix this after last night.


The bear traveled north along the deck to the hummingbird feeder and I could hear it trying to knock the feeder down.  I got up and opened the curtain a crack and yelled through the window for the bear to move on.  I didn't want to draw a whole lot of attention to myself because I don't have my window screens on yet and although I don't think a little window screening would prevent a determined bear, it would be one more layer between me and those claws.

Again last night, even after I turned the porch light on, I couldn't see him or her out the west window so I don't know whether the bear was tall enough standing up to reach the feeder from the deck or had long enough arms that it was reaching the feeder from this table, covered with a drop cloth, that I'd pushed all the way to the north end of the deck waiting for my neighbors to take it to the new apartment...

Either way, the thought is a little intimidating.  Even though the bear did not succeed in knocking the feeder down the way it had during its last visit, the feeder, which was almost full, is empty, there are smudge marks on the window...

...which has a nice coating of sugar syrup on the outside.  Bear as glazier.

Today it's on to more mundane things.  I had very excitedly toted along with me to the lease signing yesterday everything I need to take a hot shower...my way of celebrating access to hot running water...only to realize I had no shower curtain...and with this arm I didn't want to get into the tub and find out I couldn't get out!  I recalled I had a credit at Marshall's that I'd had for almost a year so drove there and found a mildew-resistant shower curtain liner and some very classic shower curtain hooks...

...and still have about $6 left on the card.  

I had to drop off a donation bag at Savers and checked out the furniture at Savers, Goodwill and the Salvation Army, but saw nothing particularly appropriate for my new apartment.  It probably is going to remain sparsely furnished until I can access some of my furniture in storage and I have no idea how long it will be before I can afford to rent a truck and travel to either Arizona or Missouri.

I'm going to have to purchase a new twin bed mattress and box springs and it appears, after going on line, I can get one for about $200 although I want to go and try that one out before I make a decision.  Other than that, I have the table that can be raised for dining height or lowered to coffee table height, an interesting faux bois straight-backed chair in storage in Boulder, a wicker side table and lamp, the steamer trunk and the chest of drawers my neighbors told me about that is coming out of a cabin here in Eldora.  Have no idea what it looks like.  I enjoy a decorating challenge so this should be fun.  

It would be more fun if my right arm was in good working order.  This is going to be the first-of-its kind "tote bag" move in...

...I took a few things down yesterday and, like my approach to so many projects, I will simply do this little by little until I have it accomplished.  I want to get everything of mine out of the cabin that I can move by myself before I even get the neighbors involved moving the steamer trunk and other larger things.


So, I'm going to load up the car and make the drive to Boulder...and I am having that hot shower today!  More later...Teddee

Ursus Versus

I think that delectable chicken I put out last night for the fox may have attracted a bear instead. This is what I found today just west of the deck:

It is bigger than it looks here.  I should have put something, besides that leaf, next to it for perspective.  I looked up bear scat on line and this is what I found on www.bear-tracker.com.  About the right size and shape.  

 
According to the North Woods Field Guides site:  "Black Bears are omnivorous, their diet consists of animals, nuts, berries, grasses, insects and aquatic life. Evidence of these will show in their scat. Often times bear scat may contain partially undigested parts of only one food source. Their droppings are one of the largest being 1 to 2 inches in diameter."


I don't see any berries in this scat out in the yard and there are still rose hips on the wild rose bushes, so maybe this is just dog or wolverine?

 

Photo by Filip Tkaczyk found on Alderleaf Wilderness College site

According to the Alderleaf Wilderness College website, wolverine scat is:  Cylindrical, 3/8 – 1 inch in diameter and 3 – 8 inches long. The scat can contain bones, fur and feathers.

The size and shape seem right, but I don't see any bones, fur or feathers, either.  So maybe I'm just blogging about dog feces! 

We do have black bears here, though.  I saw one once when we were vacationing here when I was a child and I've heard other villagers say they've seen them.  I thought maybe it had been so warm the bears were coming out of hibernation. 

 

Photo from Colorado Division of Wildlife website

According to http://wiki.answers.com:  "Bears hibernate during winter, but aren't sleeping the whole time. Hibernation for bears simply means they don't need to eat or drink, and rarely urinate or defecate (or not at all).  [Oops!  Comment mine]. There is strong evolutionary pressure for bears to stay in their dens during winter, if there is little or no food available [Italics mine.  What if here is food available?]. But bears will leave their dens on occasion, particularly when their den gets flooded or is badly damaged. [Or they smell chicken!  Comment mine.].

"Weather does play a role. In the colder, northern parts of Alaska, bears hibernate about 7 months of the year. Bears in the warmer, coastal regions of the state hibernate for 2-5 months, with the longer hibernation time for bears raising newborn cubs."  [If you'd been asleep and hadn't eaten anything for two months and you smelled chicken, wouldn't you get up and investigate?].

I also read that I'm supposed to be working to keep bears wild and shouldn't be putting out food, but it makes me feel good to do it. 

If this is the same animal that visited early last fall, it is driven wild by chicken.  I had purchased one of those broasted chickens at Wal-Mart.  At the recommendation of the "chicken lady," who said they had some really special garlic chickens coming out in fifteen minutes and they would be on special, I waited.  By the time I drove from Longmont, the car smelled like one big baked garlic bulb.  I put the chicken inside a cooler, inside the woodshed.  In the night, something strong and determined kept trying to get into the woodshed.  First it would pull at the door on the west side, then it would run around and pull repeatedly at the access my Dad had built on the east side.  I was really curious and got up and shone the flashlight out first the north window, then the east window, then the north window as it ran back and forth, but I couldn't see anything.  I didn't have courage to go outside, and it finally gave up and left.  

That's about as wild as life gets here.  What's your idea of wildlife?  Teddee